1 files changed, 2166 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/11135-0.txt b/11135-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b5ae2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/11135-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2166 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11135 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 11135-h.htm or 11135-h.zip:
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/1/3/11135/11135-h/11135-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/1/3/11135/11135-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+MONARCH, The BIG BEAR of Tallac
+
+With 100 Drawings
+
+by Ernest Thompson Seton
+
+Author of
+Wild Animals I have known
+Trail of the Sandhill Stag
+Biography of a Grizzly
+Lives of the Hunted.
+Two Little Savages. Etc.
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+
+To the memory of the days in Tallac's Pines, where by the fire I heard
+this epic tale.
+
+Kind memory calls the picture up before me now, clear, living clear: I
+see them as they sat, the one small and slight, the other tall and
+brawny, leader and led, rough men of the hills. They told me this
+tale--in broken bits they gave it, a sentence at a time. They were
+ready to talk but knew not how. Few their words, and those they used
+would be empty on paper, meaningless without the puckered lip, the
+interhiss, the brutal semi-snarl restrained by human mastery, the snap
+and jerk of wrist and gleam of steel-gray eye, that really told the
+tale, of which the spoken word was mere headline. Another, a subtler
+theme was theirs that night; not in the line but in the interline it
+ran; and listening to the hunter's ruder tale, I heard as one may hear
+the night bird singing in the storm; amid the glitter of the mica I
+caught the glint of gold, for theirs was a parable of hill-born power
+that fades when it finds the plains. They told of the giant redwood's
+growth from a tiny seed; of the avalanche that, born a snowflake,
+heaves and grows on the peaks, to shrink and die on the level lands
+below. They told of the river at our feet: of its rise, a thread-like
+rill, afar on Tallac's side, and its growth--a brook, a stream, a
+little river, a river, a mighty flood that rolled and ran from hills
+to plain to meet a final doom so strange that only the wise believe.
+Yes, I have seen it; it is there to-day--the river, the wonderful
+river, that unabated flows, but that never reaches the sea.
+
+I give you the story then as it came to me, and yet I do not give it,
+for theirs is a tongue unknown to script: I give a dim translation;
+dim, but in all ways respectful, reverencing the indomitable spirit of
+the mountaineer, worshiping the mighty Beast that nature built a
+monument of power, and loving and worshiping the clash, the awful
+strife heroic, at the close, when these two met.
+
+
+
+
+In this Book the designs for cover, title-page, and general make-up
+were done by Grace Gallatin Seton.
+
+
+
+
+List of Full-Page Drawings
+
+"The pony bounded in terror while the Grizzly ran almost alongside"
+
+"Jack ate till his paunch looked like a rubber balloon"
+
+"'Honey--Jacky--honey'"
+
+"Jack ... held up his sticky, greasy arms"
+
+The Thirty-foot Bear
+
+"'Now, B'ar, I don't want no scrap with you'"
+
+"Rumbling and snorting, he made for the friendly hills"
+
+Monarch
+
+
+
+
+
+List of The Chapters
+
+
+   I. The Two Springs
+
+  II. The Springs and the Miner's Dam
+
+ III. The Trout Pool
+
+  IV. The Stream that Sank in the Sand
+
+   V. The River Held in the Foothills
+
+  VI. The Broken Dam
+
+ VII. The Freshet
+
+VIII. Roaring in the Canon
+
+  IX. Fire and Water
+
+   X. The Eddy
+
+  XI. The Ford
+
+ XII. Swirl and Pool and Growing Flood
+
+XIII. The Deepening Channel
+
+ XIV. The Cataract
+
+  XV. The Foaming Flood
+
+ XVI. Landlocked
+
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+The story of Monarch is founded on material gathered from many sources
+as well as from personal experience, and the Bear is of necessity a
+composite. The great Grizzly Monarch, still pacing his prison floor at
+the Golden Gate Park, is the central fact of the tale.
+
+In telling it I have taken two liberties that I conceive to be proper
+in a story of this sort.
+
+First, I have selected for my hero an unusual individual.
+
+Second, I have ascribed to that one animal the adventures of several
+of his kind.
+
+The aim of the story is to picture the life of a Grizzly with the
+added glamour of a remarkable Bear personality. The intention is to
+convey the known truth. But the fact that liberties have been taken
+excludes the story from the catalogue of pure science. It must be
+considered rather an historical novel of Bear life.
+
+Many different Bears were concerned in the early adventures here
+related, but the last two chapters, the captivity and the despair of
+the Big Bear, are told as they were told to me by several witnesses,
+including my friends the two mountaineers.
+
+
+
+I. THE TWO SPRINGS
+
+
+High above Sierra's peaks stands grim Mount Tallac. Ten thousand feet
+above the sea it rears its head to gaze out north to that vast and
+wonderful turquoise that men call Lake Tahoe, and northwest, across a
+piney sea, to its great white sister, Shasta of the Snows; wonderful
+colors and things on every side, mast-like pine trees strung with
+jewelry, streams that a Buddhist would have made sacred, hills that an
+Arab would have held holy. But Lan Kellyan's keen gray eyes were
+turned to other things. The childish delight in life and light for
+their own sakes had faded, as they must in one whose training had been
+to make him hold them very cheap. Why value grass? All the world is
+grass. Why value air, when it is everywhere in measureless immensity?
+Why value life, when, all alive, his living came from taking life? His
+senses were alert, not for the rainbow hills and the gem-bright lakes,
+but for the living things that he must meet in daily rivalry, each
+staking on the game, his life. Hunter was written on his leathern
+garb, on his tawny face, on his lithe and sinewy form, and shone in
+his clear gray eye.
+
+The cloven granite peak might pass unmarked, but a faint dimple in the
+sod did not. Calipers could not have told that it was widened at one
+end, but the hunter's eye did, and following, he looked for and found
+another, then smaller signs, and he knew that a big Bear and two
+little ones had passed and were still close at hand, for the grass in
+the marks was yet unbending. Lan rode his hunting pony on the trail.
+It sniffed and stepped nervously, for it knew as well as the rider
+that a Grizzly family was near. They came to a terrace leading to an
+open upland. Twenty feet on this side of it Lan slipped to the ground,
+dropped the reins, the well-known sign to the pony that he must stand
+at that spot, then cocked his rifle and climbed the bank. At the top
+he went with yet greater caution, and soon saw an old Grizzly with her
+two cubs. She was lying down some fifty yards away and afforded a poor
+shot; he fired at what seemed to be the shoulder. The aim was true,
+but the Bear got only a flesh-wound. She sprang to her feet and made
+for the place where the puff of smoke arose. The Bear had fifty yards
+to cover, the man had fifteen, but she came racing down the bank
+before he was fairly on the horse, and for a hundred yards the pony
+bounded in terror while the old Grizzly ran almost alongside, striking
+at him and missing by a scant hair's-breadth each time. But the
+Grizzly rarely keeps up its great speed for many yards. The horse got
+under full headway, and the shaggy mother, falling behind, gave up the
+chase and returned to her cubs.
+
+[Illustration: "THE PONY BOUNDED IN TERROR WHILE THE GRIZZLY RAN
+ALMOST ALONGSIDE"]
+
+She was a singular old Bear. She had a large patch of white on her
+breast, white cheeks and shoulders, graded into the brown elsewhere,
+and Lan from this remembered her afterward as the "Pinto." She had
+almost caught him that time, and the hunter was ready to believe that
+he owed her a grudge.
+
+A week later his chance came. As he passed along the rim of Pocket
+Gulch, a small, deep valley with sides of sheer rock in most places,
+he saw afar the old Pinto Bear with her two little brown cubs. She was
+crossing from one side where the wall was low to another part easy to
+climb. As she stopped to drink at the clear stream Lan fired with his
+rifle. At the shot Pinto turned on her cubs, and slapping first one,
+then the other, she chased them up a tree. Now a second shot struck
+her and she charged fiercely up the sloping part of the wall, clearly
+recognizing the whole situation and determined to destroy that hunter.
+She came snorting up the steep acclivity wounded and raging, only to
+receive a final shot in the brain that sent her rolling back to lie
+dead at the bottom of Pocket Gulch. The hunter, after waiting to make
+sure, moved to the edge and fired another shot into the old one's
+body; then reloading, he went cautiously down to the tree where still
+were the cubs. They gazed at him with wild seriousness as he
+approached them, and when he began to climb they scrambled up higher.
+Here one set up a plaintive whining and the other an angry growling,
+their outcries increasing as he came nearer.
+
+He took out a stout cord, and noosing them in turn, dragged them to
+the ground. One rushed at him and, though little bigger than a cat,
+would certainly have done him serious injury had he not held it off
+with a forked stick.
+
+After tying them to a strong but swaying branch he went to his horse,
+got a grain-bag, dropped them into that, and rode with them to his
+shanty. He fastened each with a collar and chain to a post, up which
+they climbed, and sitting on the top they whined and growled,
+according to their humor. For the first few days there was danger of
+the cubs strangling themselves or of starving to death, but at length
+they were beguiled into drinking some milk most ungently procured from
+a range cow that was lassoed for the purpose. In another week they
+seemed somewhat reconciled to their lot, and thenceforth plainly
+notified their captor whenever they wanted food or water.
+
+And thus the two small rills ran on, a little farther down the
+mountain now, deeper and wider, keeping near each other; leaping bars,
+rejoicing in the sunlight, held for a while by some trivial dam, but
+overleaping that and running on with pools and deeps that harbor
+bigger things.
+
+
+
+II. THE SPRINGS AND THE MINER'S DAM
+
+
+Jack and Jill, the hunter named the cubs; and Jill, the little fury,
+did nothing to change his early impression of her bad temper. When at
+food-time the man came she would get as far as possible up the post
+and growl, or else sit in sulky fear and silence; Jack would scramble
+down and strain at his chain to meet his captor, whining softly, and
+gobbling his food at once with the greatest of gusto and the worst of
+manners. He had many odd ways of his own, and he was a lasting rebuke
+to those who say an animal has no sense of humor. In a month he had
+grown so tame that he was allowed to run free. He followed his master
+like a dog, and his tricks and funny doings were a continual delight
+to Kellyan and the few friends he had in the mountains.
+
+On the creek-bottom below the shack was a meadow where Lan cut enough
+hay each year to feed his two ponies through the winter. This year
+when hay-time came Jack was his daily companion, either following him
+about in dangerous nearness to the snorting scythe, or curling up an
+hour at a time on his coat to guard it assiduously from such
+aggressive monsters as Ground Squirrels and Chipmunks. An interesting
+variation of the day came about whenever the mower found a bumblebees'
+nest. Jack loved honey, of course, and knew quite well what a bees'
+nest was, so the call, "Honey--Jacky--honey!" never failed to bring
+him in waddling haste to the spot. Jerking his nose up in token of
+pleasure, he would approach cautiously, for he knew that bees have
+stings. Watching his chance, he would dexterously slap at them with
+his paws till, one by one, they were knocked down and crushed; then
+sniffing hard for the latest information, he would stir up the nest
+gingerly till the very last was tempted forth to be killed. When the
+dozen or more that formed the swarm were thus got rid of, Jack would
+carefully dig out the nest and eat first the honey, next the grubs and
+wax, and last of all the bees he had killed, champing his jaws like a
+little Pig at a trough, while his long red, snaky tongue was ever busy
+lashing the stragglers into his greedy maw.
+
+[Illustration: "JACK ATE TILL HIS PAUNCH LOOKED LIKE A RUBBER
+BALLOON"]
+
+Lan's nearest neighbor was Lou Bonamy, an ex-cowboy and sheep-herder,
+now a prospecting miner. He lived, with his dog, in a shanty about a
+mile below Kellyan's shack. Bonamy had seen Jack "perform on a
+bee-crew." And one day, as he came to Kellyan's, he called out: "Lan,
+bring Jack here and we'll have some fun." He led the way down the
+stream into the woods. Kellyan followed him, and Jacky waddled at
+Kellyan's heels, sniffing once in a while to make sure he was not
+following the wrong pair of legs.
+
+"There, Jacky, honey--honey!" and Bonamy pointed up a tree to an
+immense wasps' nest.
+
+Jack cocked his head on one side and swung his nose on the other.
+Certainly those things buzzing about looked like bees, though he never
+before saw a bees' nest of that shape, or in such a place.
+
+But he scrambled up the trunk. The men waited--Lan in doubt as to
+whether he should let his pet cub go into such danger, Bonamy
+insisting it would be a capital joke "to spring a surprise" on the
+little Bear. Jack reached the branch that held the big nest high over
+the deep water, but went with increasing caution. He had never seen a
+bees' nest like this; it did not have the right smell. Then he took
+another step forward on the branch--what an awful lot of bees; another
+step--still they were undoubtedly bees; he cautiously advanced a
+foot--and bees mean honey; a little farther--he was now within four
+feet of the great paper globe. The bees hummed angrily and Jack
+stepped back, in doubt. The men giggled; then Bonamy called softly and
+untruthfully: "Honey--Jacky--honey!"
+
+[Illustration: "'HONEY--JACKY--HONEY'"]
+
+The little Bear, fortunately for himself, went slowly, since in doubt;
+he made no sudden move, and he waited a long time, though urged to go
+on, till the whole swarm of bees had reentered their nest. Now Jacky
+jerked his nose up, hitched softly out a little farther till right
+over the fateful paper globe. He reached out, and by lucky chance put
+one horny little paw-pad over the hole; his other arm grasped the
+nest, and leaping from the branch he plunged headlong into the pool
+below, taking the whole thing with him. As soon as he reached the
+water his hind feet were seen tearing into the nest, kicking it to
+pieces; then he let it go and struck out for the shore, the nest
+floating in rags down-stream. He ran alongside till the comb lodged
+against a shallow place, then he plunged in again; the wasps were
+drowned or too wet to be dangerous, and he carried his prize to the
+bank in triumph. No honey; of course, that was a disappointment, but
+there were lots of fat white grubs--almost as good--and Jack ate till
+his paunch looked like a little rubber balloon.
+
+"How is that?" chuckled Lan.
+
+"The laugh is on us," answered Bonamy, with a grimace.
+
+
+
+III. THE TROUT POOL
+
+
+Jack was now growing into a sturdy cub, and he would follow Kellyan
+even as far as Bonamy's shack. One day, as they watched him rolling
+head over heels in riotous glee, Kellyan remarked to his friend: "I'm
+afraid some one will happen on him an' shoot him in the woods for a
+wild B'ar."
+
+"Then why don't you ear-mark him with them thar new sheep-rings?" was
+the sheep-man's suggestion.
+
+Thus it was that, much against his will, Jack's ears were punched and
+he was decorated with earrings like a prize ram. The intention was
+good, but they were neither ornamental nor comfortable. Jack fought
+them for days, and when at length he came home trailing a branch that
+was caught in the jewel of his left ear, Kellyan impatiently removed
+them.
+
+At Bonamy's he formed two new acquaintances, a blustering, bullying
+old ram that was "in storage" for a sheep-herder acquaintance, and
+which inspired him with a lasting enmity for everything that smelt of
+sheep--and Bonamy's dog.
+
+This latter was an active, yapping, unpleasant cur that seemed to
+think it rare fun to snap at Jacky's heels, then bound out of reach. A
+joke is a joke, but this horrid beast did not know where to stop, and
+Jack's first and second visits to the Bonamy hut were quite spoiled by
+the tyranny of the dog. If Jack could have got hold of him he might
+have settled the account to his own satisfaction, but he was not quick
+enough for that. His only refuge was up a tree. He soon discovered
+that he was happier away from Bonamy's, and thenceforth when he saw
+his protector take the turn that led to the miner's cabin, Jack said
+plainly with a look, "No, thank you," and turned back to amuse himself
+at home.
+
+His enemy, however, often came with Bonamy to the hunter's cabin, and
+there resumed his amusement of teasing the little Bear. It proved so
+interesting a pursuit that the dog learned to come over on his own
+account whenever he felt like having some fun, until at length Jack
+was kept in continual terror of the yellow cur. But it all ended very
+suddenly.
+
+One hot day, while the two men smoked in front of Kellyan's house, the
+dog chased Jack up a tree and then stretched himself out for a
+pleasant nap in the shade of its branches. Jack was forgotten as the
+dog slumbered. The little Bear kept very quiet for a while, then, as
+his twinkling brown eyes came back to that hateful dog, that he could
+neither catch nor get away from, an idea seemed to grow in his small
+brain. He began to move slowly and silently down the branch until he
+was over the foe, slumbering, twitching his limbs, and making little
+sounds that told of dreams of the chase, or, more likely, dreams of
+tormenting a helpless Bear cub. Of course, Jack knew nothing of that.
+His one thought, doubtless, was that he hated that cur and now he
+could vent his hate. He came just over the tyrant, and taking careful
+aim, he jumped and landed squarely on the dog's ribs. It was a
+terribly rude awakening, but the dog gave no yelp, for the good reason
+that the breath was knocked out of his body. No bones were broken,
+though he was barely able to drag himself away in silent defeat, while
+Jacky played a lively tune on his rear with paws that were fringed
+with meat-hooks.
+
+Evidently it was a most excellent plan; and when the dog came around
+after that, or when Jack went to Bonamy's with his master, as he soon
+again ventured to do, he would scheme with more or less success to
+"get the drop on the purp," as the men put it. The dog now rapidly
+lost interest in Bear-baiting, and in a short time it was a forgotten
+sport.
+
+
+
+IV. THE STREAM THAT SANK IN THE SAND
+
+
+Jack was funny; Jill was sulky. Jack was petted and given freedom, so
+grew funnier; Jill was beaten and chained, so grew sulkier. She had a
+bad name and she was often punished for it; it is usually so.
+
+One day, while Lan was away, Jill got free and joined her brother.
+They broke into the little storehouse and rioted among the provisions.
+They gorged themselves with the choicest sorts; and the common stuffs,
+like flour, butter, and baking-powder, brought fifty miles on
+horseback, were good enough only to be thrown about the ground or
+rolled in. Jack had just torn open the last bag of flour, and Jill was
+puzzling over a box of miner's dynamite, when the doorway darkened and
+there stood Kellyan, a picture of amazement and wrath. Little Bears do
+not know anything about pictures, but they have some acquaintance with
+wrath. They seemed to know that they were sinning, or at least in
+danger, and Jill sneaked, sulky and snuffy, into a dark corner, where
+she glared defiantly at the hunter. Jack put his head on one side,
+then, quite forgetful of all his misbehavior, he gave a delighted
+grunt, and scuttling toward the man, he whined, jerked his nose, and
+held up his sticky, greasy arms to be lifted and petted as though he
+were the best little Bear in the world.
+
+[Illustration: "JACK ... HELD UP HIS STICKY, GREASY ARMS"]
+
+Alas, how likely we are to be taken at our own estimate! The scowl
+faded from the hunter's brow as the cheeky and deplorable little Bear
+began to climb his leg. "You little divil," he growled, "I'll break
+your cussed neck"; but he did not. He lifted the nasty, sticky little
+beast and fondled him as usual, while Jill, no worse--even more
+excusable, because less trained--suffered all the terrors of his wrath
+and was double-chained to the post, so as to have no further chance of
+such ill-doing.
+
+This was a day of bad luck for Kellyan. That morning he had fallen and
+broken his rifle. Now, on his return home, he found his provisions
+spoiled, and a new trial was before him.
+
+A stranger with a small pack-train called at his place that evening
+and passed the night with him. Jack was in his most frolicsome mood
+and amused them both with tricks half-puppy and half-monkey like, and
+in the morning, when the stranger was leaving, he said: "Say, pard,
+I'll give you twenty-five dollars for the pair." Lan hesitated,
+thought of the wasted provisions, his empty purse, his broken rifle,
+and answered: "Make it fifty and it's a go."
+
+"Shake on it."
+
+So the bargain was made, the money paid, and in fifteen minutes the
+stranger was gone with a little Bear in each pannier of his horse.
+
+Jill was surly and silent; Jack kept up a whining that smote on Lan's
+heart with a reproachful sound, but he braced himself with, "Guess
+they're better out of the way; couldn't afford another storeroom
+racket," and soon the pine forest had swallowed up the stranger, his
+three led horses, and the two little Bears.
+
+"Well, I'm glad he's gone," said Lan, savagely, though he knew quite
+well that he was already scourged with repentance. He began to set his
+shanty in order. He went to the storehouse and gathered the remnants
+of the provisions. After all, there was a good deal left. He walked
+past the box where Jack used to sleep. How silent it was! He noted the
+place where Jack used to scratch the door to get into the cabin, and
+started at the thought that he should hear it no more, and told
+himself, with many cuss-words, that he was "mighty glad of it." He
+pottered about, doing--doing--oh, anything, for an hour or more; then
+suddenly he leaped on his pony and raced madly down the trail on the
+track of the stranger. He put the pony hard to it, and in two hours he
+overtook the train at the crossing of the river.
+
+"Say, pard, I done wrong. I didn't orter sell them little B'ars,
+leastwise not Jacky. I--I--wall, now, I want to call it off. Here's
+yer yellow."
+
+"I'm satisfied with my end of it," said the stranger, coldly.
+
+"Well, I ain't," said Lan, with warmth, "an' I want it off."
+
+"Ye're wastin' time if that's what ye come for," was the reply.
+
+"We'll see about that," and Lan threw the gold pieces at the rider and
+walked over toward the pannier, where Jack was whining joyfully at the
+sound of the familiar voice.
+
+"Hands up," said the stranger, with the short, sharp tone of one who
+had said it before, and Lan turned to find himself covered with a .45
+navy Colt.
+
+"Ye got the drop on me," he said; "I ain't got no gun; but look-a
+here, stranger, that there little B'ar is the only pard I got; he's my
+stiddy company an' we're almighty fond o' each other. I didn't know
+how much I was a-goin' to miss him. Now look-a here: take back yer
+fifty; ye give me Jack an' keep Jill."
+
+"If ye got five hundred cold plunks in yaller ye kin get him; if not,
+you walk straight to that tree thar an' don't drop yer hands or turn
+or I'll fire. Now start."
+
+Mountain etiquette is very strict, and Lan, being without weapons,
+must needs obey the rules. He marched to the distant tree under cover
+of the revolver. The wail of little Jack smote painfully on his ear,
+but he knew the ways of the mountaineers too well to turn or make
+another offer, and the stranger went on.
+
+Many a man has spent a thousand dollars in efforts to capture some
+wild thing and felt it worth the cost--for a time. Then he is willing
+to sell it for half cost, then for quarter, and at length he ends by
+giving it away. The stranger was vastly pleased with his comical Bear
+cubs at first, and valued them proportionately; but each day they
+seemed more troublesome and less amusing, so that when, a week later,
+at the Bell-Cross Ranch, he was offered a horse for the pair, he
+readily closed, and their days of hamper-travel were over.
+
+The owner of the ranch was neither mild, refined, nor patient. Jack,
+good-natured as he was, partly grasped these facts as he found himself
+taken from the pannier, but when it came to getting cranky little Jill
+out of the basket and into a collar, there ensued a scene so
+unpleasant that no collar was needed. The ranchman wore his hand in a
+sling for two weeks, and Jacky at his chain's end paced the ranch-yard
+alone.
+
+
+
+V. THE RIVER HELD IN THE FOOTHILLS
+
+
+There was little of pleasant interest in the next eighteen months of
+Jack's career. His share of the globe was a twenty-foot circle around
+a pole in the yard. The blue hills of the offing, the nearer pine
+grove, and even the ranch-house itself were fixed stars, far away and
+sending merely faint suggestions of their splendors to his not very
+bright eyes. Even the horses and men were outside his little sphere
+and related to him about as much as comets are to the earth. The very
+tricks that had made him valued were being forgotten as Jack grew up
+in chains.
+
+At first a butter-firkin had made him an ample den, but he rapidly
+passed through the various stages--butter-firkin, nail-keg,
+flour-barrel, oil-barrel--and had now to be graded as a good average
+hogshead Bear, though he was far from filling that big round wooden
+cavern that formed his latest den.
+
+The ranch hotel lay just where the foothills of the Sierras with their
+groves of live oaks were sloping into the golden plains of the
+Sacramento. Nature had showered on it every wonderful gift in her lap.
+A foreground rich with flowers, luxuriant in fruit, shade and sun, dry
+pastures, rushing rivers, and murmuring rills, were here. Great trees
+were variants of the view, and the high Sierras to the east overtopped
+the wondrous plumy forests of their pines with blocks of sculptured
+blue. Back of the house was a noble river of water from the hills,
+fouled and chained by sluice and dam, but still a noble stream whose
+earliest parent rill had gushed from grim old Tallac's slope.
+
+Things of beauty, life, and color were on every side, and yet most
+sordid of the human race were the folk about the ranch hotel. To see
+them in this setting might well raise doubt that any "rise from Nature
+up to Nature's God." No city slum has ever shown a more ignoble crew,
+and Jack, if his mind were capable of such things, must have graded
+the two-legged ones lower in proportion as he knew them better.
+
+Cruelty was his lot, and hate was his response. Almost the only
+amusing trick he now did was helping himself to a drink of beer. He
+was very fond of beer, and the loafers about the tavern often gave him
+a bottle to see how dexterously he would twist off the wire and work
+out the cork. As soon as it popped, he would turn it up between his
+paws and drink to the last drop.
+
+The monotony of his life was occasionally varied with a dog fight. His
+tormentors would bring their Bear dogs "to try them on the cub." It
+seemed to be very pleasant sport to men and dogs, till Jack learned
+how to receive them. At first he used to rush furiously at the nearest
+tormentor until brought up with a jerk at the end of his chain and
+completely exposed to attack behind from another dog. A month or two
+entirely changed his method. He learned to sit against the hogshead
+and quietly watch the noisy dogs around him, with much show of
+inattention, making no move, no matter how near they were, until they
+"bunched," that is, gathered in one place. Then he charged. It was
+inevitable that the hind dogs would be the last to jump, and so
+hindered the front ones; thus Jack would "get" one or more of them,
+and the game became unpopular.
+
+When about eighteen months old, and half grown, an incident took place
+which defied all explanation. Jack had won the name of being
+dangerous, for he had crippled one man with a blow and nearly killed a
+tipsy fool who volunteered to fight him. A harmless but
+good-for-nothing sheep-herder who loafed about the place got very
+drunk one night and offended some fire-eaters. They decided that, as
+he had no gun, it would be the proper thing to club him to their
+hearts' content instead of shooting him full of holes, in the manner
+usually prescribed by their code. Faco Tampico made for the door and
+staggered out into the darkness. His pursuers were even more drunk,
+but, bent on mischief, they gave chase, and Faco dodged back of the
+house and into the yard. The mountaineers had just wit enough to keep
+out of reach of the Grizzly as they searched about for their victim,
+but they did not find him. Then they got torches, and making sure that
+he was not in the yard, were satisfied that he had fallen into the
+river behind the barn and doubtless was drowned. A few rude jokes, and
+they returned to the house. As they passed the Grizzly's den their
+lanterns awoke in his eyes a glint of fire. In the morning the cook,
+beginning his day, heard strange sounds in the yard. They came from
+the Grizzly's den: "Hyar, you, lay over dahr," in sleepy tones; then a
+deep, querulous grunting.
+
+The cook went as close as he dared and peeped in. Said the same voice
+in sleepy tones: "Who are ye crowding, caramba!" and a human elbow was
+seen jerking and pounding; and again impatient growling in bear-like
+tones was the response.
+
+The sun came up and the astonished loafers found it was the missing
+sheep-herder that was in the Bear's den, calmly sleeping off his
+debauch in the very cave of death. The men tried to get him out, but
+the Grizzly plainly showed that they could do so only over his dead
+body. He charged with vindictive fury at any who ventured near, and
+when they gave up the attempt he lay down at the door of the den on
+guard. At length the sheep-herder came to himself, rose up on his
+elbows, and realizing that he was in the power of the young Grizzly,
+he stepped gingerly over his guardian's back and ran off without even
+saying "Thank you."
+
+The Fourth of July was at hand now, and the owner of the tavern,
+growing weary of the huge captive in the yard, announced that he would
+celebrate Independence Day with a grand fight between a "picked and
+fighting range bull and a ferocious Californian Grizzly." The news was
+spread far and wide by the "Grapevine Telegraph." The roof of the
+stable was covered with seats at fifty cents each. The hay-wagon was
+half loaded and drawn alongside the corral; seats here gave a perfect
+view and were sold at a dollar apiece. The old corral was repaired,
+new posts put in where needed, and the first thing in the morning a
+vicious old bull was herded in and tormented till he was "snuffy" and
+extremely dangerous.
+
+Jack meanwhile had been roped, "choked down," and nailed up in his
+hogshead. His chain and collar were permanently riveted together, so
+the collar was taken off, as "it would be easy to rope him, _if need
+be, after the bull was through with him."_
+
+The hogshead was rolled over to the corral gate and all was ready.
+
+The cowboys came from far and near in their most gorgeous trappings,
+and the California cowboy is the peacock of his race. Their best girls
+were with them, and farmers and ranchmen came for fifty miles to enjoy
+the Bull-and-Bear fight. Miners from the hills were there, Mexican
+sheep-herders, storekeepers from Placerville, strangers from
+Sacramento; town and county, mountain and plain, were represented. The
+hay-wagon went so well that another was brought into market. The barn
+roof was sold out. An ominous crack of the timbers somewhat shook the
+prices, but a couple of strong uprights below restored the market, and
+all "The Corners" was ready and eager for the great fight. Men who had
+been raised among cattle were betting on the bull.
+
+"I tell you, there ain't nothing on earth kin face a big range bull
+that hez good use of hisself."
+
+But the hillmen were backing the Bear. "Pooh, what's a bull to a
+Grizzly? I tell you, I seen a Grizzly send a horse clean over the
+Hetch-Hetchy with one clip of his left. Bull! I'll bet he'll never
+show up in the second round."
+
+So they wrangled and bet, while burly women, trying to look fetching,
+gave themselves a variety of airs, were "scared at the whole thing,
+nervous about the uproar, afraid it would be shocking," but really
+were as keenly interested as the men.
+
+All was ready, and the boss of "The Corners" shouted: "Let her go,
+boys; house is full an' time's up!"
+
+Faco Tampico had managed to tie a bundle of chaparral thorn to the
+bull's tail, so that the huge creature had literally lashed himself
+into a frenzy.
+
+Jack's hogshead meanwhile had been rolled around till he was raging
+with disgust, and Faco, at the word of command, began to pry open the
+door. The end of the barrel was close to the fence, the door cleared
+away; now there was nothing for Jack to do but to go forth and claw
+the bull to pieces. But he did not go. The noise, the uproar, the
+strangeness of the crowd affected him so that he decided to stay where
+he was, and the bull-backers raised a derisive cry. Their champion
+came forward bellowing and sniffing, pausing often to paw the dust. He
+held his head very high and approached slowly until he came within ten
+feet of the Grizzly's den; then, giving a snort, he turned and ran to
+the other end of the corral. Now it was the Bear-backers' turn to
+shout.
+
+But the crowd wanted a fight, and Faco, forgetful of his debt to
+Grizzly Jack, dropped a bundle of Fourth of July crackers into the
+hogshead by way of the bung. "Crack!" and Jack jumped up.
+"Fizz--crack--c-r-r-r-a-a-c-k, cr-k-crk-ck!" and Jack in surprise
+rushed from his den into the arena. The bull was standing in a
+magnificent attitude there in the middle, but when he saw the Bear
+spring toward him, he gave two mighty snorts and retreated as far as
+he could, amid cheers and hisses.
+
+Perhaps the two main characteristics of the Grizzly are the quickness
+with which he makes a plan and the vigor with which he follows it up.
+Before the bull had reached the far side of the corral Jack seemed to
+know the wisest of courses. His pig-like eyes swept the fence in a
+flash--took in the most climbable part, a place where a cross-piece
+was nailed on in the middle. In three seconds he was there, in two
+seconds he was over, and in one second he dashed through the running,
+scattering mob and was making for the hills as fast as his strong and
+supple legs could carry him. Women screamed, men yelled, and dogs
+barked; there was a wild dash for the horses tied far from the scene
+of the fight, to spare their nerves, but the Grizzly had three hundred
+yards' start, five hundred yards even, and before the gala mob gave
+out a long and flying column of reckless, riotous riders, the Grizzly
+had plunged into the river, a flood no dog cared to face, and had
+reached the chaparral and the broken ground in line for the piney
+hills. In an hour the ranch hotel, with its galling chain, its
+cruelties, and its brutal human beings, was a thing of the past, shut
+out by the hills of his youth, cut off by the river of his cub-hood,
+the river grown from the rill born in his birthplace away in Tallac's
+pines. That Fourth of July was a glorious Fourth--it was Independence
+Day for Grizzly Jack.
+
+
+
+VI. THE BROKEN DAM
+
+
+A wounded deer usually works downhill, a hunted Grizzly climbs. Jack
+knew nothing of the country, but he did know that he wanted to get
+away from that mob, so he sought the roughest ground, and climbed and
+climbed.
+
+He had been alone for hours, traveling up and on. The plain was lost
+to view. He was among the granite rocks, the pine trees, and the
+berries now, and he gathered in food from the low bushes with
+dexterous paws and tongue as he traveled, but stopped not at all until
+among the tumbled rock, where the sun heat of the afternoon seemed to
+command rather than invite him to rest.
+
+The night was black when he awoke, but Bears are not afraid of the
+dark--they rather fear the day--and he swung along, led, as before, by
+the impulse to get up above the danger; and thus at last he reached
+the highest range, the region of his native Tallac.
+
+He had but little of the usual training of a young Bear, but he had a
+few instincts, his birthright, that stood him well in all the main
+issues, and his nose was an excellent guide. Thus he managed to live,
+and wild-life experiences coming fast gave his mind the chance to
+grow.
+
+Jack's memory for faces and facts was not at all good, but his memory
+for smells was imperishable. He had forgotten Bonamy's cur, but the
+smell of Bonamy's cur would instantly have thrilled him with the old
+feelings. He had forgotten the cross ram, but the smell of "Old Woolly
+Whiskers" would have inspired him at once with anger and hate; and one
+evening when the wind came richly laden with ram smell it was like a
+bygone life returned. He had been living on roots and berries for
+weeks and now began to experience that hankering for flesh that comes
+on every candid vegetarian with dangerous force from time to time. The
+ram smell seemed an answer to it. So down he went by night (no
+sensible Bear travels by day), and the smell brought him from the
+pines on the hillside to an open rocky dale.
+
+Long before he got there a curious light shone up. He knew what that
+was; he had seen the two-legged ones make it near the ranch of evil
+smells and memories, so feared it not. He swung along from ledge to
+ledge in silence and in haste, for the smell of sheep grew stronger at
+every stride, and when he reached a place above the fire he blinked
+his eyes to find the sheep. The smell was strong now; it was rank, but
+no sheep to be seen. Instead he saw in the valley a stretch of gray
+water that seemed to reflect the stars, and yet they neither twinkled
+nor rippled; there was a murmuring sound from the sheet, but it seemed
+not at all like that of the lakes around.
+
+[Illustration: The Herd of Eyes]
+
+The stars were clustered chiefly near the fire, and were less like
+stars than spots of the phosphorescent wood that are scattered on the
+ground when one knocks a rotten stump about to lick up its swarms of
+wood-ants. So Jack came closer, and at last so close that even his
+dull eyes could see. The great gray lake was a flock of sheep and the
+phosphorescent specks were their eyes. Close by the fire was a log or
+a low rough bank--that turned out to be the shepherd and his dog. Both
+were objectionable features, but the sheep extended far from them.
+Jack knew that his business was with the flock.
+
+He came very close to the edge and found them surrounded by a low
+hedge of chaparral; but what little things they were compared with
+that great and terrible ram that he dimly remembered! The blood-thirst
+came on him. He swept the low hedge aside, charged into the mass of
+sheep that surged away from him with rushing sounds of feet and
+murmuring groans, struck down one, seized it, and turning away, he
+scrambled back up the mountains.
+
+The sheep-herder leaped to his feet, fired his gun, and the dog came
+running over the solid mass of sheep, barking loudly. But Jack was
+gone. The sheep-herder contented himself with making two or three
+fires, shooting off his gun, and telling his beads.
+
+That was Jack's first mutton, but it was not the last. Thenceforth
+when he wanted a sheep--and it became a regular need--he knew he had
+merely to walk along the ridge till his nose said, "Turn, and go so,"
+for smelling is believing in Bear life.
+
+
+
+VII. THE FRESHET
+
+
+Pedro Tampico and his brother Faco were not in the sheep business for
+any maudlin sentiment. They did not march ahead of their beloveds
+waving a crook as wand of office or appealing to the esthetic sides of
+their ideal followers with a tabret and pipe. Far from leading the
+flock with a symbol, they drove them with an armful of ever-ready
+rocks and clubs. They were not shepherds; they were sheep-herders.
+They did not view their charges as loved and loving followers, but as
+four-legged cash; each sheep was worth a dollar bill. They were cared
+for only as a man cares for his money, and counted after each alarm or
+day of travel. It is not easy for any one to count three thousand
+sheep, and for a Mexican sheep-herder it is an impossibility. But he
+has a simple device which answers the purpose. In an ordinary flock
+about one sheep in a hundred is a black one. If a portion of the flock
+has gone astray, there is likely to be a black one in it. So by
+counting his thirty black sheep each day Tampico kept rough count of
+his entire flock.
+
+Grizzly Jack had killed but one sheep that first night. On his next
+visit he killed two, and on the next but one, yet that last one
+happened to be black, and when Tampico found but twenty-nine of its
+kind remaining he safely reasoned that he was losing sheep--according
+to the index a hundred were gone.
+
+"If the land is unhealthy move out" is ancient wisdom. Tampico filled
+his pocket with stones, and reviling his charges in all their walks in
+life and history, he drove them from the country that was evidently
+the range of a sheep-eater. At night he found a walled-in canon, a
+natural corral, and the woolly scattering swarm, condensed into a
+solid fleece, went pouring into the gap, urged intelligently by the
+dog and idiotically by the man. At one side of the entrance Tampico
+made his fire. Some thirty feet away was a sheer wall of rock.
+
+Ten miles may be a long day's travel for a wretched wool-plant, but it
+is little more than two hours for a Grizzly. It is farther than
+eyesight, but it is well within nosesight, and Jack, feeling
+mutton-hungry, had not the least difficulty in following his prey. His
+supper was a little later than usual, but his appetite was the better
+for that. There was no alarm in camp, so Tampico had fallen asleep. A
+growl from the dog awakened him. He started up to behold the most
+appalling creature that he had ever seen or imagined, a monster Bear
+standing on his hind legs, and thirty feet high at least. The dog fled
+in terror, but was valor itself compared with Pedro. He was so
+frightened that he could not express the prayer that was in his
+breast: "Blessed saints, let him have every sin-blackened sheep in the
+band, but spare your poor worshiper," and he hid his head; so never
+learned that he saw, not a thirty-foot Bear thirty feet away, but a
+seven-foot Bear not far from the fire and casting a black thirty-foot
+shadow on the smooth rock behind. And, helpless with fear, poor Pedro
+groveled in the dust.
+
+[Illustration: THE THIRTY-FOOT BEAR]
+
+When he looked up the giant Bear was gone. There was a rushing of the
+sheep. A small body of them scurried out of the canon into the night,
+and after them went an ordinary-sized Bear, undoubtedly a cub of the
+monster.
+
+Pedro had been neglecting his prayers for some months back, but he
+afterward assured his father confessor that on this night he caught up
+on all arrears and had a goodly surplus before morning. At sunrise he
+left his dog in charge of the flock and set out to seek the runaways,
+knowing, first, that there was little danger in the day-time, second,
+that some would escape. The missing ones were a considerable number,
+raised to the second power indeed, for two more black ones were gone.
+Strange to tell, they had not scattered, and Pedro trailed them a mile
+or more in the wilderness till he reached another very small box
+canon. Here he found the missing flock perched in various places on
+boulders and rocky pinnacles as high up as they could get. He was
+delighted and worked for half a minute on his bank surplus of prayers,
+but was sadly upset to find that nothing would induce the sheep to
+come down from the rocks or leave that canon. One or two that he
+manoeuvered as far as the outlet sprang back in fear from _something on
+the ground_, which, on examination, he found--yes, he swears to
+this--to be the deep-worn, fresh-worn pathway of a Grizzly from one
+wall across to the other. All the sheep were now back again beyond his
+reach. Pedro began to fear for himself, so hastily returned to the
+main flock. He was worse off than ever now. The other Grizzly was a
+Bear of ordinary size and ate a sheep each night, but the new one,
+into whose range he had entered, was a monster, a Bear mountain,
+requiring forty or fifty sheep to a meal. The sooner he was out of
+this the better.
+
+It was now late, too late, and the sheep were too tired to travel, so
+Pedro made unusual preparations for the night: two big fires at the
+entrance to the canon, and a platform fifteen feet up in a tree for
+his own bed. The dog could look out for himself.
+
+
+
+VIII. ROARING IN THE CANON
+
+
+Pedro knew that the big Bear was coming; for the fifty sheep in the
+little canon were not more than an appetizer for such a creature. He
+loaded his gun carefully as a matter of habit and went up-stairs to
+bed. Whatever defects his dormitory had the ventilation was good, and
+Pedro was soon a-shiver. He looked down in envy at his dog curled up
+by the fire; then he prayed that the saints might intervene and direct
+the steps of the Bear toward the flock of some neighbor, and carefully
+specified the neighbor to avoid mistakes. He tried to pray himself to
+sleep. It had never failed in church when he was at the Mission, so
+why now? But for once it did not succeed. The fearsome hour of
+midnight passed, then the gray dawn, the hour of dull despair, was
+near. Tampico felt it, and a long groan vibrated through his
+chattering teeth. His dog leaped up, barked savagely, the sheep began
+to stir, then went backing into the gloom; there was a rushing of
+stampeding sheep and a huge, dark form loomed up. Tampico grasped his
+gun and would have fired, when it dawned on him with sickening horror
+that the Bear was thirty feet high, his platform was only fifteen,
+just a convenient height for the monster. None but a madman would
+invite the Bear to eat by shooting at him now. So Pedro flattened
+himself face downward on the platform, and, with his mouth to a crack,
+he poured forth prayers to his representative in the sky, regretting
+his unconventional attitude and profoundly hoping that it would be
+overlooked as unavoidable, and that somehow the petitions would get
+the right direction after leaving the under side of the platform.
+
+In the morning he had proof that his prayers had been favorably
+received. There was a Bear-track, indeed, but the number of black
+sheep was unchanged, so Pedro filled his pocket with stones and began
+his usual torrent of remarks as he drove the flock.
+
+"Hyah, Capitan--you huajalote," as the dog paused to drink. "Bring
+back those ill-descended sons of perdition," and a stone gave force to
+the order, which the dog promptly obeyed. Hovering about the great
+host of grumbling hoofy locusts, he kept them together and on the
+move, while Pedro played the part of a big, noisy, and troublesome
+second.
+
+As they journeyed through the open country the sheep-herder's eye fell
+on a human figure, a man sitting on a rock above them to the left.
+Pedro gazed inquiringly; the man saluted and beckoned. This meant
+"friend"; had he motioned him to pass on it might have meant, "Keep
+away or I shoot." Pedro walked toward him a little way and sat down.
+The man came forward. It was Lan Kellyan, the hunter.
+
+Each was glad of a chance to "talk with a human" and to get the news.
+The latest concerning the price of wool, the Bull-and-Bear fiasco,
+and, above all, the monster Bear that had killed Tampico's
+sheep, afforded topics of talk. "Ah, a Bear devill--de hell-brute--a
+Gringo Bear--pardon, my amigo, I mean a very terroar."
+
+As the sheep-herder enlarged on the marvelous cunning of the Bear that
+had a private sheep corral of his own, and the size of the monster,
+forty or fifty feet high now--for such Bears are of rapid and
+continuous growth--Kellyan's eye twinkled and he said:
+
+"Say, Pedro, I believe you once lived pretty nigh the Hassayampa,
+didn't you?"
+
+This does not mean that that is a country of great Bears, but was an
+allusion to the popular belief that any one who tastes a single drop
+of the Hassayampa River can never afterward tell the truth. Some
+scientists who have looked into the matter aver that this wonderful
+property is common to the Rio Grande as well as the Hassayampa, and,
+indeed, all the rivers of Mexico, as well as their branches, and the
+springs, wells, ponds, lakes, and irrigation ditches. However that may
+be, the Hassayampa is the best-known stream of this remarkable
+peculiarity. The higher one goes, the greater its potency, and Pedro
+was from the headwaters. But he protested by all the saints that his
+story was true. He pulled out a little bottle of garnets, got by
+glancing over the rubbish laid about their hills by the desert ants;
+he thrust it back into his wallet and produced another bottle with a
+small quantity of gold-dust, also gathered at the rare times when he
+was not sleepy, and the sheep did not need driving, watering, stoning,
+or reviling.
+
+"Here, I bet dat it ees so."
+
+Gold is a loud talker.
+
+Kellyan paused. "I can't cover your bet, Pedro, but I'll kill your
+Bear for what's in the bottle."
+
+"I take you," said the sheep-herder, "eef you breeng back dose sheep
+dat are now starving up on de rocks of de canon of Baxstaire's."
+
+The Mexican's eyes twinkled as the white man closed on the offer. The
+gold in the bottle, ten or fifteen dollars, was a trifle, and yet
+enough to send the hunter on the quest--enough to lure him into the
+enterprise, and that was all that was needed. Pedro knew his man: get
+him going and profit would count for nothing; having put his hand to
+the plow Lan Kellyan would finish the furrow at any cost; he was
+incapable of turning back. And again he took up the trail of Grizzly
+Jack, his one-time "pard," now grown beyond his ken.
+
+The hunter went straight to Baxter's canon and found the sheep
+high-perched upon the rocks. By the entrance he found the remains of
+two of them recently devoured, and about them the tracks of a
+medium-sized Bear. He saw nothing of the pathway--the dead-line--made
+by the Grizzly to keep the sheep prisoners till he should need them.
+But the sheep were standing in stupid terror on various high places,
+apparently willing to starve rather than come down. Lan dragged one
+down; at once it climbed up again. He now realized the situation, so
+made a small pen of chaparral outside the canon, and dragging the dull
+creatures down one at a time, he carried them--except one--out of the
+prison of death and into the pen. Next he made a hasty fence across
+the canon's mouth, and turning the sheep out of the pen, he drove them
+by slow stages toward the rest of the flock.
+
+Only six or seven miles across country, but it was late night when Lan
+arrived.
+
+Tampico gladly turned over half of the promised dust. That night they
+camped together, and, of course, no Bear appeared.
+
+In the morning Lan went back to the canon and found, as expected, that
+the Bear had returned and killed the remaining sheep.
+
+The hunter piled the rest of the carcasses in an open place, lightly
+sprinkled the Grizzly's trail with some very dry brush, then making a
+platform some fifteen feet from the ground in a tree, he rolled up in
+his blanket there and slept.
+
+An old Bear will rarely visit a place three nights in succession; a
+cunning Bear will avoid a trail that has been changed overnight; a
+skilful Bear goes in absolute silence. But Jack was neither old,
+cunning, nor skilful. He came for the fourth time to the canon of the
+sheep. He followed his old trail straight to the delicious mutton
+bones. He found the human trail, but there was something about it that
+rather attracted him. He strode along on the dry boughs. "Crack!" went
+one; "crack-crack!" went another; and Kellyan arose on the platform
+and strained his eyes in the gloom till a dark form moved into the
+opening by the bones of the sheep. The hunter's rifle cracked, the
+Bear snorted, wheeled into the bushes, and, crashing away, was gone.
+
+
+
+IX. FIRE AND WATER
+
+
+That was Jack's baptism of fire, for the rifle had cut a deep
+flesh-wound in his back. Snorting with pain and rage, he tore through
+the bushes and traveled on for an hour or more, then lay down and
+tried to lick the wound, but it was beyond reach. He could only rub it
+against a log. He continued his journey back toward Tallac, and there,
+in a cave that was formed of tumbled rocks, he lay down to rest. He
+was still rolling about in pain when the sun was high and a strange
+smell of fire came searching through the cave; it increased, and
+volumes of blinding smoke were about him. It grew so choking that he
+was forced to move, but it followed him till he could bear it no
+longer, and he dashed out of another of the ways that led into the
+cavern. As he went he caught a distant glimpse of a man throwing wood
+on the fire by the in-way, and the whiff that the wind brought him
+said: "This is the man that was last night watching the sheep."
+Strange as it may seem, the woods were clear of smoke except for a
+trifling belt that floated in the trees, and Jack went striding away
+in peace. He passed over the ridge, and finding berries, ate the first
+meal he had known since killing his last sheep. He had wandered on,
+gathering fruit and digging roots, for an hour or two, when the smoke
+grew blacker, the smell of fire stronger. He worked away from it, but
+in no haste. The birds, deer, and wood hares were now seen scurrying
+past him. There was a roaring in the air. It grew louder, was coming
+nearer, and Jack turned to stride after the wood things that fled.
+
+The whole forest was ablaze; the wind was rising, and the flames,
+gaining and spreading, were flying now like wild horses. Jack had no
+place in his brain for such a thing; but his instinct warned him to
+shun that coming roaring that sent above dark clouds and flying
+fire-flakes, and messengers of heat below, so he fled before it, as
+the forest host was doing. Fast as he went, and few animals can outrun
+a Grizzly in rough country, the hot hurricane was gaining on him. His
+sense of danger had grown almost to terror, terror of a kind that he
+had never known before, for here there was nothing he could fight;
+nothing that he could resist. The flames were all around him now;
+birds without number, hares, and deer had gone down before the red
+horror. He was plunging wildly on through chaparral and manzanita
+thickets that held all feebler things until the fury seized them; his
+hair was scorching, his wound was forgotten, and he thought only of
+escape when the brush ahead opened, and the Grizzly, smoke-blinded,
+half roasted, plunged down a bank and into a small clear pool. The fur
+on his back said "hiss," for it was sizzling-hot. Down below he went,
+gulping the cool drink, wallowing in safety and unheat. Down below the
+surface he crouched as long as his lungs would bear the strain, then
+slowly and cautiously he raised his head. The sky above was one great
+sheet of flame. Sticks aflame and flying embers came in hissing
+showers on the water. The air was hot, but breathable at times, and he
+filled his lungs till he had difficulty in keeping his body down
+below. Other creatures there were in the pool, some burnt, some dead,
+some small and in the margin, some bigger in the deeper places, and
+one of them was close beside him. Oh, he knew that smell; fire--all
+Sierra's woods ablaze--could not disguise the hunter who had shot at
+him from the platform, and, though he did not know this, the hunter
+really who had followed him all day, and who had tried to smoke him
+out of his den and thereby set the woods ablaze. Here they were, face
+to face, in the deepest end of the little pool; they were only ten
+feet apart and could not get more than twenty feet apart. The flames
+grew unbearable. The Bear and man each took a hasty breath and bobbed
+below the surface, each wondering, according to his intelligence, what
+the other would do. In half a minute both came up again, each relieved
+to find the other no nearer. Each tried to keep his nose and one eye
+above the water. But the fire was raging hot; they had to dip under
+and stay as long as possible.
+
+The roaring of the flame was like a hurricane. A huge pine tree came
+crashing down across the pool; it barely missed the man. The splash of
+water quenched the blazes for the most part, but it gave off such a
+heat that he had to move--a little nearer to the Bear. Another fell at
+an angle, killing a coyote, and crossing the first tree. They blazed
+fiercely at their junction, and the Bear edged from it a little nearer
+the man. Now they were within touching distance. His useless gun was
+lying in shallow water near shore, but the man had his knife ready,
+ready for self-defense. It was not needed; the fiery power had
+proclaimed a peace. Bobbing up and dodging under, keeping a nose in
+the air and an eye on his foe, each spent an hour or more. The red
+hurricane passed on. The smoke was bad in the woods, but no longer
+intolerable, and as the Bear straightened up in the pool to move away
+into shallower water and off into the woods, the man got a glimpse of
+red blood streaming from the shaggy back and dyeing the pool. The
+blood on the trail had not escaped him. He knew that this was the Bear
+of Baxter's canon, this was the Gringo Bear, but he did not know that
+this was also his old-time Grizzly Jack. He scrambled out of the pond,
+on the other side from that taken by the Grizzly, and, hunter and
+hunted, they went their diverse ways.
+
+
+
+X. THE EDDY
+
+
+All the west slopes of Tallac were swept by the fire, and Kellyan
+moved to a new hut on the east side, where still were green patches;
+so did the grouse and the rabbit and the coyote, and so did Grizzly
+Jack. His wound healed quickly, but his memory of the rifle smell
+continued; it was a dangerous smell, a new and horrible kind of
+smoke--one he was destined to know too well; one, indeed, he was soon
+to meet again. Jack was wandering down the side of Tallac, following a
+sweet odor that called up memories of former joys--the smell of honey,
+though he did not know it. A flock of grouse got leisurely out of his
+way and flew to a low tree, when he caught a whiff of man smell, then
+heard a crack like that which had stung him in the sheep-corral, and
+down fell one of the grouse close beside him. He stepped forward to
+sniff just as a man also stepped forward from the opposite bushes.
+They were within ten feet of each other, and they recognized each
+other, for the hunter saw that it was a singed Bear with a wounded
+side, and the Bear smelt the rifle-smoke and the leather clothes.
+Quick as a Grizzly--that is, quicker than a flash--the Bear reared.
+The man sprang backward, tripped and fell, and the Grizzly was upon
+him. Face to earth the hunter lay like dead, but, ere he struck, Jack
+caught a scent that made him pause. He smelt his victim, and the smell
+was the rolling back of curtains or the conjuring up of a past. The
+days in the hunter's shanty were forgotten, but the feelings of those
+days were ready to take command at the bidding of the nose. His nose
+drank deep of a draft that quelled all rage. The Grizzly's humor
+changed. He turned and left the hunter quite unharmed.
+
+Oh, blind one with the gun! All he could find in explanation was: "You
+kin never tell what a Grizzly will do, but it's good play to lay low
+when he has you cornered." It never came into his mind to credit the
+shaggy brute with an impulse born of good, and when he told the
+sheep-herder of his adventure in the pool, of his hitting high on the
+body and of losing the trail in the forest fire--"down by the shack,
+when he turned up sudden and had me I thought my last day was come.
+Why he didn't swat me, I don't know. But I tell you this, Pedro: the
+B'ar what killed your sheep on the upper pasture and in the sheep
+canon is the same. No two B'ars has hind feet alike when you get a
+clear-cut track, and this holds out even right along."
+
+"What about the fifty-foot B'ar I saw wit' mine own eyes, caramba?"
+
+"That must have been the night you were working a kill-care with your
+sheep-herder's delight. But don't worry; I'll get him yet."
+
+So Kellyan set out on a long hunt, and put in practice every trick he
+knew for the circumventing of a Bear. Lou Bonamy was invited to join
+with him, for his yellow cur was a trailer. They packed four horses
+with stuff and led them over the ridge to the east side of Tallac, and
+down away from Jack's Peak, that Kellyan had named in honor of his
+Bear cub, toward Fallen Leaf Lake. The hunter believed that here he
+would meet not, only the Gringo Bear that he was after, but would also
+stand a chance of finding others, for the place had escaped the fire.
+
+They quickly camped, setting up their canvas sheet for shade more than
+against rain, and after picketing their horses in a meadow, went out
+to hunt. By circling around Leaf Lake they got a good idea of the wild
+population: plenty of deer, some Black Bear, and one or two Cinnamon
+and Grizzly, and one track along the shore that Kellyan pointed to,
+briefly saying: "That's him."
+
+"Ye mean old Pedro's Gringo?"
+
+"Yep. That's the fifty-foot Grizzly. I suppose he stands maybe seven
+foot high in daylight, but, 'course, B'ars pulls out long at night."
+
+So the yellow cur was put on the track, and led away with funny little
+yelps, while the two hunters came stumbling along behind him as fast
+as they could, calling, at times, to the dog not to go so fast, and
+thus making a good deal of noise, which Gringo Jack heard a mile away
+as he ambled along the mountain-side above them. He was following his
+nose to many good and eatable things, and therefore going up-wind.
+This noise behind was so peculiar that he wanted to smell it, and to
+do that he swung along back over the clamor, then descended to the
+down-wind side, and thus he came on the trail of the hunters and their
+dog.
+
+His nose informed him at once. Here was the hunter he once felt kindly
+toward and two other smells of far-back--both hateful; all three were
+now the smell-marks of foes, and a rumbling "woof" was the expressive
+sound that came from his throat.
+
+That dog-smell in particular roused him, though it is very sure he had
+forgotten all about the dog, and Gringo's feet went swiftly and
+silently, yes, with marvelous silence, along the tracks of the enemy.
+
+On rough, rocky ground a dog is scarcely quicker than a Bear, and
+since the dog was constantly held back by the hunters the Bear had no
+difficulty in overtaking them. Only a hundred yards or so behind he
+continued, partly in curiosity, pursuing the dog that was pursuing
+him, till a shift of the wind brought the dog a smell-call from the
+Bear behind. He wheeled--of course you never follow trail smell when
+you can find body smell--and came galloping back with a different
+yapping and a bristling in his mane.
+
+"Don't understand that," whispered Bonamy.
+
+"It's B'ar, all right," was the answer; and the dog, bounding high,
+went straight toward the foe.
+
+Jack heard him coming, smelt him coming, and at length saw him coming;
+but it was the smell that roused him--the full scent of the bully of
+his youth. The anger of those days came on him, and cunning enough to
+make him lurk in ambush: he backed to one side of the trail where it
+passed under a root, and, as the little yellow tyrant came, Jack hit
+him once, hit him as he had done some years before, but now with the
+power of a grown Grizzly. No yelp escaped the dog, no second blow was
+needed. The hunters searched in silence for half an hour before they
+found the place and learned the tale from many silent tongues.
+
+"I'll get even with him," muttered Bonamy, for he loved that
+contemptible little yap-cur.
+
+"That's Pedro's Gringo, all right. He's sure cunning to run his own
+back track. But we'll fix him yet," and they vowed to kill that Bear
+or "get done up" themselves.
+
+Without a dog, they must make a new plan of hunting. They picked out
+two or three good places for pen-traps, where trees stood in pairs to
+make the pillars of the den. Then Kellyan returned to camp for the ax
+while Bonamy prepared the ground.
+
+As Kellyan came near their open camping-place, he stopped from habit
+and peeped ahead for a minute. He was about to go down when a movement
+caught his eye. There, on his haunches, sat a Grizzly, looking down on
+the camp. The singed brown of his head and neck, and the white spot on
+each side of his back, left no doubt that Kellyan and Pedro's Gringo
+were again face to face. It was a long shot, but the rifle went up,
+and as he was about to fire, the Bear suddenly bent his head down, and
+lifting his hind paw, began to lick at a little cut. This brought the
+head and chest nearly in line with Kellyan--a sure shot; so sure that
+he fired hastily. He missed the head and the shoulder, but, strange to
+say, he hit the Bear in the mouth and in the hind toe, carrying away
+one of his teeth and the side of one toe. The Grizzly sprang up with a
+snort, and came tearing down the hill toward the hunter. Kellyan
+climbed a tree and got ready, but the camp lay just between them, and
+the Bear charged on that instead. One sweep of his paw and the canvas
+tent was down and torn. Whack! and tins went flying this way. Whisk!
+and flour-sacks went that. Rip! and the flour went off like smoke.
+Slap--crack! and a boxful of odds and ends was scattered into the
+fire. Whack! and a bagful of cartridges was tumbled after it. Whang!
+and the water-pail was crushed. Pat-pat-pat! and all the cups were in
+useless bits.
+
+Kellyan, safe up the tree, got no fair view to shoot--could only wait
+till the storm-center cleared a little. The Bear chanced on a bottle
+of something with a cork loosely in it. He seized it adroitly in his
+paws, twisted out the cork, and held the bottle up to his mouth with a
+comical dexterity that told of previous experience. But, whatever it
+was, it did not please the invader; he spat and spilled it out, and
+flung the bottle down as Kellyan gazed, astonished. A remarkable
+"crack! crack! crack!" from the fire was heard now, and the cartridges
+began to go off in ones, twos, fours, and numbers unknown. Gringo
+whirled about; he had smashed everything in view. He did not like that
+Fourth of July sound, so, springing to a bank, he went bumping and
+heaving down to the meadow and had just stampeded the horses when, for
+the first time, Gringo exposed himself to the hunter's aim. His flank
+was grazed by another leaden stinger, and Gringo, wheeling, went off
+into the woods.
+
+The hunters were badly defeated. It was fully a week before they had
+repaired all the damage done by their shaggy visitor and were once
+more at Fallen Leaf Lake with a new store of ammunition and
+provisions, their tent repaired, and their camp outfit complete. They
+said little about their vow to kill that Bear. Both took for granted
+that it was a fight to the finish. They never said, "_If_ we get him,"
+but, "_When_ we get him."
+
+
+
+XI. THE FORD
+
+
+Gringo, savage, but still discreet, scaled the long mountain-side when
+he left the ruined camp, and afar on the southern slope he sought a
+quiet bed in a manzanita thicket, there to lie down and nurse his
+wounds and ease his head so sorely aching with the jar of his
+shattered tooth. There he lay for a day and a night, sometimes in
+great pain, and at no time inclined to stir. But, driven forth by
+hunger on the second day, he quit his couch and, making for the
+nearest ridge, he followed that and searched the wind with his nose.
+The smell of a mountain hunter reached him. Not knowing just what to
+do he sat down and did nothing. The smell grew stronger, he heard
+sounds of trampling; closer they came, then the brush parted and a man
+on horseback appeared. The horse snorted and tried to wheel, but the
+ridge was narrow and one false step might have been serious. The
+cowboy held his horse in hand and, although he had a gun, he made no
+attempt to shoot at the surly animal blinking at him and barring his
+path. He was an old mountaineer, and he now used a trick that had long
+been practised by the Indians, from whom, indeed, he learned it. He
+began "making medicine with his voice."
+
+"See here now, B'ar," he called aloud, "I ain't doing nothing to you.
+I ain't got no grudge ag'in' you, an' you ain't got no right to a
+grudge ag'in' me."
+
+"Gro-o-o-h," said Gringo, deep and low.
+
+"Now, I don't want no scrap with you, though I have my scrap-iron
+right handy, an' what I want you to do is just step aside an' let me
+pass that narrer trail an' go about my business."
+
+"Grow--woo-oo-wow," grumbled Gringo.
+
+"I'm honest about it, pard. You let me alone, and I'll let you alone;
+all I want is right of way for five minutes."
+
+"Grow-grow-wow-oo-umph," was the answer.
+
+"Ye see, thar's no way round an' on'y one way through, an' you happen
+to be settin' in it. I got to take it, for I can't turn back. Come,
+now, is it a bargain--hands off and no scrap?"
+
+It is very sure that Gringo could see in this nothing but a human
+making queer, unmenacing, monotonous sounds, so giving a final
+"Gr-u-ph," the Bear blinked his eyes, rose to his feet and strode down
+the bank, and the cowboy forced his unwilling horse to and past the
+place.
+
+"Wall, wall," he chuckled, "I never knowed it to fail. Thar's whar
+most B'ars is alike."
+
+If Gringo had been able to think clearly, he might have said: "This
+surely is a new kind of man."
+
+[Illustration: "NOW, B'AR, I DON'T WANT NO SCRAP WITH YOU"]
+
+
+
+XII. SWIRL AND POOL AND GROWING FLOOD
+
+
+Gringo wandered on with nose alert, passing countless odors of
+berries, roots, grouse, deer, till a new and pleasing smell came with
+especial force. It was not sheep, or game, or a dead thing. It was a
+smell of living meat. He followed the guide to a little meadow, and
+there he found it. There were five of them, red, or red and
+white--great things as big as himself; but he had no fear of them. The
+hunter instinct came on him, and the hunter's audacity and love of
+achievement. He sneaked toward them upwind in order that he might
+still smell them, and it also kept them from smelling him. He reached
+the edge of the wood. Here he must stop or be seen. There was a
+watering-place close by. He silently drank, then lay down in a thicket
+where he could watch. An hour passed thus. The sun went down and the
+cattle arose to graze. One of them, a small one, wandered nearer,
+then, acting suddenly with purpose, walked to the water-hole. Gringo
+watched his chance, and as she floundered in the mud and stooped he
+reared and struck with all his force. Square at her skull he aimed,
+and the blow went straight. But Gringo knew nothing of horns. The
+young, sharp horn, upcurling, hit his foot and was broken off; the
+blow lost half its power. The beef went down, but Gringo had to follow
+up the blow, then raged and tore in anger for his wounded paw. The
+other cattle fled from the scene. The Grizzly took the heifer in his
+jaws, then climbed the hill to his lair, and with this store of food
+he again lay down to nurse his wounds. Though painful, they were not
+serious, and within a week or so Grizzly Jack was as well as ever and
+roaming the woods about Fallen Leaf Lake and farther south and east,
+for he was extending his range as he grew--the king was coming to his
+kingdom. In time he met others of his kind and matched his strength
+with theirs. Sometimes he won and sometimes lost, but he kept on
+growing as the months went by, growing and learning and adding to his
+power.
+
+Kellyan had kept track of him and knew at least the main facts of his
+life, because he had one or two marks that always served to
+distinguish him. A study of the tracks had told of the round wound in
+the front foot and the wound in the hind foot. But there was another:
+the hunter had picked up the splinters of bone at the camp where he
+had fired at the Bear, and, after long doubt, he guessed that he had
+broken a tusk. He hesitated to tell the story of hitting a tooth and
+hind toe at the same shot till, later, he had clearer proof of its
+truth.
+
+No two animals are alike. Kinds which herd have more sameness than
+those that do not, and the Grizzly, being a solitary kind, shows great
+individuality. Most Grizzlies mark their length on the trees by
+rubbing their backs, and some will turn on the tree and claw it with
+their fore paws; others hug the tree with fore paws and rake it with
+their hind claws. Gringo's peculiarity of marking was to rub first,
+then turn and tear the trunk with his teeth.
+
+It was on examining one of the Bear trees one day that Kellyan
+discovered the facts. He had been tracking the Bear all morning, had a
+fine set of tracks in the dusty trail, and thus learned that the
+rifle-wound was a toe-shot in the hind foot, but his fore foot of the
+same side had a large round wound, the one really made by the cow's
+horn. When he came to the Bear tree where Gringo had carved his
+initials, the marks were clearly made by the Bear's teeth, and one of
+the upper tusks was broken off, so the evidence of identity was
+complete.
+
+"It's the same old B'ar," said Lan to his pard.
+
+They failed to get sight of him in all this time, so the partners set
+to work at a series of Bear-traps. These are made of heavy logs and
+have a sliding door of hewn planks. The bait is on a trigger at the
+far end; a tug on this lets the door drop. It was a week's hard work
+to make four of these traps. They did not set them at once, for no
+Bear will go near a thing so suspiciously new-looking. Some Bears will
+not approach one till it is weather-beaten and gray. But they removed
+all chips and covered the newly cut wood with mud, then rubbed the
+inside with stale meat, and hung a lump of ancient venison on the
+trigger of each trap.
+
+They did not go around for three days, knowing that the human smell
+must first be dissipated, and then they found but one trap sprung--the
+door down. Bonamy became greatly excited, for they had crossed the
+Grizzly's track close by. But Kellyan had been studying the dust and
+suddenly laughed aloud.
+
+"Look at that,"--he pointed to a thing like a Bear-track, but scarcely
+two inches long. "There's the B'ar we'll find in that; that's a
+bushy-tailed B'ar," and Bonamy joined in the laugh when he realized
+that the victim in the big trap was nothing but a little skunk.
+
+"Next time we'll set the bait higher and not set the trigger so fine."
+
+They rubbed their boots with stale meat when they went the rounds,
+then left the traps for a week.
+
+There are Bears that eat little but roots and berries; there are Bears
+that love best the great black salmon they can hook out of the pools
+when the long "run" is on; and there are Bears that have a special
+fondness for flesh. These are rare; they are apt to develop unusual
+ferocity and meet an early death. Gringo was one of them, and he grew
+like the brawny, meat-fed gladiators of old--bigger, stronger, and
+fiercer than his fruit-and root-fed kin. In contrast with this was his
+love of honey. The hunter on his trail learned that he never failed to
+dig out any bees' nest he could find, or, finding none, he would eat
+the little honey-flowers that hung like sleigh-bells on the heather.
+Kellyan was quick to mark the signs. "Say, Bonamy, we've got to find
+some honey."
+
+It is not easy to find a bee tree without honey to fill your
+bee-guides; so Bonamy rode down the mountain to the nearest camp, the
+Tampico sheep camp, and got not honey but some sugar, of which they
+made syrup. They caught bees at three or four different places, tagged
+them with cotton, filled them with syrup and let them fly, watching
+till the cotton tufts were lost to view, and by going on the lines
+till they met they found the hive. A piece of gunny-sack filled with
+comb was put on each trigger, and that night, as Gringo strode with
+that long, untiring swing that eats up miles like steam-wheels, his
+sentinel nose reported the delicious smell, the one that above the
+rest meant joy. So Gringo Jack followed fast and far, for the place
+was a mile away, and reaching the curious log cavern, he halted and
+sniffed. There were hunters' smells; yes, but, above all, that smell
+of joy. He walked around to be sure, and knew it was inside; then
+cautiously he entered. Some wood-mice scurried by. He sniffed the
+bait, licked it, mumbled it, slobbered it, reveled in it, tugged to
+increase the flow, when "bang!" went the great door behind and Jack was
+caught. He backed up with a rush, bumped into the door, and had a
+sense, at least, of peril. He turned over with an effort and attacked
+the door, but it was strong. He examined the pen; went all around the
+logs where their rounded sides seemed easiest to tear at with his
+teeth. But they yielded nothing. He tried them all; he tore at the
+roof, the floor; but all were heavy, hard logs, spiked and pinned as
+one.
+
+The sun came up as he raged, and shone through the little cracks of
+the door, and so he turned all his power on that. The door was flat,
+gave little hold, but he battered with his paws and tore with his
+teeth till plank after plank gave way. With a final crash be drove the
+wreck before him and Jack was free again.
+
+The men read the story as though in print; yes, better, for bits of
+plank can tell no lies, and the track to the pen and from the pen was
+the track of a big Bear with a cut on the hind foot and a curious
+round peg-like scar on the front paw, while the logs inside, where
+little torn, gave proof of a broken tooth.
+
+"We had him that time, but he knew too much for us. Never mind, we'll
+see."
+
+So they kept on and caught him again, for honey he could not resist.
+But the wreckage of the trap was all they found in the morning.
+
+Pedro's brother knew a man who had trapped Bears, and the sheep-herder
+remembered that it is necessary to have the door quite _light-tight_
+rather than very strong, so they battened all with tar-paper outside.
+But Gringo was learning "pen-traps." He did not break the door that he
+did not see through, but he put one paw under and heaved it up when he
+had finished the bait. Thus he baffled them and sported with the
+traps, till Kellyan made the door drop into a deep groove so that the
+Bear could put no claw beneath it. But it was cold weather now. There
+was deepening snow on the Sierras. The Bear sign disappeared. The
+hunters knew that Gringo was sleeping his winter's sleep.
+
+
+
+XIII. THE DEEPENING CHANNEL
+
+
+April was bidding high Sierra snows go back to Mother Sea. The
+California woodwales screamed in clamorous joy. They thought it was
+about a few acorns left in storage in the Live Oak bark, but it really
+was joy of being alive. This outcry was to them what music is to the
+thrush, what joy-bells are to us--a great noise to tell how glad they
+were. The deer were bounding, grouse were booming, rills were
+rushing--all things were full of noisy gladness.
+
+Kellyan and Bonamy were back on the Grizzly quest. "Time he was out
+again, and good trailing to get him, with lots of snow in the
+hollows." They had come prepared for a long hunt. Honey for bait,
+great steel traps with crocodilian jaws, and guns there were in the
+outfit. The pen-trap, the better for the aging, was repaired and
+re-baited, and several Black Bears were taken. But Gringo, if about,
+had learned to shun it.
+
+He was about, and the men soon learned that. His winter sleep was
+over. They found the peg-print in the snow, but with it, or just
+ahead, was another, the tracks of a smaller Bear.
+
+"See that," and Kellyan pointed to the smaller mark. "This is
+mating-time; this is Gringo's honeymoon," and he followed the trail
+for a while, not expecting to find them, but simply to know their
+movements. He followed several times and for miles, and the trail told
+him many things. Here was the track of a third Bear joining. Here were
+marks of a combat, and a rival driven away was written there, and then
+the pair went on. Down from the rugged hills it took him once to where
+a love-feast had been set by the bigger Bear; for the carcass of a
+steer lay half devoured, and the telltale ground said much of the
+struggle that foreran the feast. As though to show his power, the Bear
+had seized the steer by the nose and held him for a while--so said the
+trampled earth for rods--struggling, bellowing, no doubt, music for my
+lady's ears, till Gringo judged it time to strike him down with paws
+of steel.
+
+Once only the hunters saw the pair--a momentary Glimpse of a Bear so
+huge they half believed Tampico's tale, and a Bear of lesser size in
+fur that rolled and rippled in the sun with brown and silver lights.
+
+"Oh, ain't that just the beautifulest thing that ever walked!" and
+both the hunters gazed as she strode from view in the chaparral. It
+was only a neck of the thicket; they both must reappear in a minute at
+the other side, and the men prepared to fire; but for some
+incomprehensible reason the two did not appear again. They never quit
+the cover, and had wandered far away before the hunters knew it, and
+were seen of them no more.
+
+But Faco Tampico saw them. He was visiting his brother with the sheep,
+and hunting in the foot-hills to the eastward, in hopes of getting a
+deer, his small black eyes fell on a pair of Bears, still love-bound,
+roaming in the woods. They were far below him. He was safe, and he
+sent a ball that laid the she-Bear low; her back was broken. She fell
+with a cry of pain and vainly tried to rise. Then Gringo rushed
+around, sniffed the wind for the foe, and Faco fired again. The sound
+and the smoke-puff told Gringo where the man lay hid. He raged up the
+cliff, but Faco climbed a tree, and Gringo went back to his mate. Faco
+fired again; Gringo made still another effort to reach him, but could
+not find him now, so returned to his "Silver-brown."
+
+Whether it was chance or choice can never be known, but when Faco
+fired once more, Gringo Jack was between, and the ball struck him. It
+was the last in Faco's pouch, and the Grizzly, charging as before,
+found not a trace of the foe. He was gone--had swung across a place no
+Bear could cross and soon was a mile away. The big Bear limped back to
+his mate, but she no longer responded to his touch. He watched about
+for a time, but no one came. The silvery hide was never touched by
+man, and when the semblance of his mate was gone, Gringo quit the
+place.
+
+The world was full of hunters, traps, and guns. He turned toward the
+lower hills where the sheep grazed, where once he had raided Pedro's
+flocks, limping along, for now he had another flesh-wound. He found
+the scent of the foe that killed his "Silver-brown," and would have
+followed, but it ceased at a place where a horse-track joined. Yet he
+found it again that night, mixed with the sheep smell so familiar
+once. He followed this, sore and savage. It led him to a settler's
+flimsy shack, the house of Tampico's parents, and as the big Bear
+reached it two human beings scrambled out of the rear door.
+
+"My husband," shrieked the woman, "pray! Let us pray to the saints for
+help!"
+
+"Where is my pistol?" cried the husband.
+
+"Trust in the saints," said the frightened woman.
+
+"Yes, if I had a cannon, or if this was a cat; but with only a
+pepper-box pistol to meet a Bear mountain it is better to trust to a
+tree," and old Tampico scrambled up a pine.
+
+The Grizzly looked into the shack, then passed to the pig-pen, killed
+the largest there, for this was a new kind of meat, and carrying it
+off, he made his evening meal.
+
+He came again and again to that pig-pen. He found his food there till
+his wound was healed. Once he met with a spring-gun, but it was set
+too high. Six feet up, the sheep-folk judged, would be just about
+right for such a Bear; the charge went over his head, and so he passed
+unharmed--a clear proof that he was a devil. He was learning this: the
+human smell in any form is a smell of danger. He quit the little
+valley of the shack, wandering downward toward the plains. He passed a
+house one night, and walking up, he discovered a hollow thing with a
+delicious smell. It was a ten-gallon keg that had been used for sugar,
+some of which was still in the bottom, and thrusting in his huge head,
+the keg-rim, bristling with nails, stuck to him. He raged about,
+clawing at it wildly and roaring in it until a charge of shot from the
+upper windows stirred him to such effort that the keg was smashed to
+bits and his blinders removed.
+
+Thus the idea was slowly borne in on him: going near a man-den is sure
+to bring trouble. Thenceforth he sought his prey in the woods or on
+the plains. He one day found the man scent that enraged him the day he
+lost his "Silver-brown." He took the trail, and passing in silence
+incredible for such a bulk, he threaded chaparral and manzanita on and
+down through tule-beds till the level plain was reached. The scent led
+on, was fresher now. Far out were white specks--moving things. They
+meant nothing to Gringo, for he had never smelt wild geese, had
+scarcely seen them, but the trail he was hunting went on. He swiftly
+followed till the tule ahead rustled gently, and the scent was _body
+scent_. A ponderous rush, a single blow--and the goose-hunt was
+ended ere well begun, and Faco's sheep became the brother's heritage.
+
+
+
+XIV. THE CATARACT
+
+
+Just as fads will for a time sway human life, so crazes may run
+through all animals of a given kind. This was the year when a
+beef-eating craze seemed to possess every able-bodied Grizzly of the
+Sierras. They had long been known as a root-eating, berry-picking,
+inoffensive race when let alone, but now they seemed to descend on the
+cattle-range in a body and make their diet wholly of flesh.
+
+One cattle outfit after another was attacked, and the whole country
+seemed divided up among Bears of incredible size, cunning, and
+destructiveness. The cattlemen offered bounties--good bounties,
+growing bounties, very large bounties at last--but still the Bears
+kept on. Very few were killed, and it became a kind of rude jest to
+call each section of the range, not by the cattle brand, but by the
+Grizzly that was quartered on its stock.
+
+Wonderful tales were told of these various Bears of the new breed. The
+swiftest was Reelfoot, the Placerville cattle-killer that could charge
+from a thicket thirty yards away and certainly catch a steer before it
+could turn and run, and that could even catch ponies in the open when
+they were poor. The most cunning of all was Brin, the Mokelumne
+Grizzly that killed by preference blooded stock, would pick out a
+Merino ram or a white-faced Hereford from among fifty grades; that
+killed a new beef every night; that never again returned to it, or
+gave the chance for traps or poisoning.
+
+The Pegtrack Grizzly of Feather River was rarely seen by any. He was
+enveloped in mysterious terror. He moved and killed by night. Pigs
+were his favorite food, and he had also killed a number of men.
+
+But Pedro's Grizzly was the most marvelous. "Hassayampa," as the
+sheep-herder was dubbed, came one night to Kellyan's hut.
+
+"I tell you he's still dere. He has keel me a t'ousand sheep. You
+telled me you keel heem; you haff not. He is beegare as dat tree. He
+eat only sheep--much sheep. I tell you he ees Gringo devil--he ees
+devil Bear. I haff three cows, two fat, one theen. He catch and keel
+de fat; de lean run off. He roll een dust--make great dust. Cow come
+for see what make dust; he catch her an' keel. My fader got bees. De
+devil Bear chaw pine; I know he by hees broke toof. He gum hees face
+and nose wit' pine gum so bees no sting, then eat all bees. He devil
+all time. He get much rotten manzanita and eat till drunk--locoed--then
+go crazy and keel sheep just for fun. He get beeg bull by nose and
+drag like rat for fun. He keel cow, sheep, and keel Face, too, for
+fun. He devil. You promise me you keel heem; you nevaire keel."
+
+This is a condensation of Pedro's excited account.
+
+And there was yet one more--the big Bear that owned the range from the
+Stanislaus to the Merced, the "Monarch of the Range" he had been
+styled. He was believed--yes, known to be--the biggest Bear alive, a
+creature of supernatural intelligence. He killed cows for food, and
+scattered sheep or conquered bulls for pleasure. It was even said that
+the appearance of an unusually big bull anywhere was a guaranty that
+Monarch would be there for the joy of combat with a worthy foe. A
+destroyer of cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses, and yet a creature known
+only by his track. He was never seen, and his nightly raids seemed
+planned with consummate skill to avoid all kinds of snares.
+
+The cattlemen clubbed together and offered an enormous bounty for
+every Grizzly killed in the range. Bear-trappers came and caught some
+Bears, Brown and Cinnamon, but the cattle-killing went on. They set
+out better traps of massive steel and iron bars, and at length they
+caught a killer, the Mokelumne Grizzly; yes, and read in the dust how
+he had come at last and made the fateful step; but steel will break
+and iron will bend. The great Bear-trail was there to tell the tale:
+for a while he had raged and chafed at the hard black reptile biting
+into his paw; then, seeking a boulder, he had released the paw by
+smashing the trap to pieces on it. Thenceforth each year he grew more
+cunning, huge, and destructive.
+
+Kellyan and Bonamy came down from the mountains now, tempted by the
+offered rewards. They saw the huge tracks; they learned that cattle
+were not killed in all places at once. They studied and hunted. They
+got at length in the dust the full impressions of the feet of the
+various monsters in regions wide apart, and they saw that all the
+cattle were killed in the same way--their muzzles torn, their necks
+broken; and last, the marks on the trees where the Bears had reared
+and rubbed, then scored them with a broken tusk, the same all through
+the wide range; and Kellyan told them with calm certainty: "Pedro's
+Gringo, Old Pegtrack, the Placerville Grizzly, and the Monarch of the
+Range _are one and the same Bear."_
+
+The little man from the mountains and the big man from the hills set
+about the task of hunting him down with an intensity of purpose which,
+like the river that is dammed, grew more fierce from being balked.
+
+All manner of traps had failed for him. Steel traps he could smash, no
+log trap was strong enough to hold this furry elephant; he would not
+come to a bait; he never fed twice from the same kill.
+
+Two reckless boys once trailed him to a rocky glen. The horses would
+not enter; the boys went in afoot, and were never seen again. The
+Mexicans held him in superstitious terror, believing that he could not
+be killed; and he passed another year in the cattle-land, known and
+feared now as the "Monarch of the Range," killing in the open by
+night, and retiring by day to his fastness in the near hills, where
+horsemen could not follow.
+
+Bonamy had been called away; but all that summer, and winter,
+too,--for the Grizzly no longer "denned up,"--Kellyan rode and rode,
+each time too late or too soon to meet the Monarch. He was almost
+giving up, not in despair, but for lack of means, when a message came
+from a rich man, a city journalist, offering to multiply the reward by
+ten if, instead of killing the Monarch, he would bring him in alive.
+
+Kellyan sent for his old partner, and when word came that the previous
+night three cows were killed in the familiar way near the Bell-Dash
+pasture, they spared neither horse nor man to reach the spot. A
+ten-hour ride by night meant worn-out horses, but the men were iron,
+and new horses with scarcely a minute's delay were brought them. Here
+were the newly killed beeves, there the mighty footprints with the
+scars that spelled his name. No hound could have tracked him better
+than Kellyan did. Five miles away from the foot of the hills was an
+impenetrable thicket of chaparral. The great tracks went in, did not
+come out, so Bonamy sat sentinel while Kellyan rode back with the
+news. "Saddle up the best we got!" was the order. Rifles were taken
+down and cartridge-belts being swung when Kellyan called a halt.
+
+"Say, boys, we've got him safe enough. He won't try to leave the
+chaparral till night. If we shoot him we get the cattlemen's bounty;
+if we take him alive--an' it's easy in the open--we get the newspaper
+bounty, ten times as big. Let's leave all guns behind; lariats are
+enough."
+
+"Why not have the guns along to be handy?"
+
+"'Cause I know the crowd too well; they couldn't resist the chance to
+let him have it; so no guns at all. It's ten to one on the riata."
+
+Nevertheless three of them brought their heavy revolvers. Seven
+gallant riders on seven fine horses, they rode out that day to meet
+the Monarch of the Range. He was still in the thicket, for it was yet
+morning. They threw stones in and shouted to drive him out, without
+effect, till the noon breeze of the plains arose--the down-current of
+air from the hills. Then they fired the grass in several places, and
+it sent a rolling sheet of flame and smoke into the thicket. There was
+a crackling louder than the fire, a smashing of brush, and from the
+farther side out hurled the Monarch Bear, the Gringo, Grizzly Jack.
+Horsemen were all about him now, armed not with guns but with the
+rawhide snakes whose loops in air spell bonds or death. The men were
+calm, but the horses were snorting and plunging in fear. This way and
+that the Grizzly looked up at the horsemen--a little bit; scarcely up
+at the horses; then turning without haste, he strode toward the
+friendly hills.
+
+"Look out, now, Bill! Manuel! It's up to you."
+
+Oh, noble horses, nervy men! oh, grand old Grizzly, how I see you now!
+Cattle-keepers and cattle-killer face to face!
+
+Three riders of the range that horse had never thrown were sailing,
+swooping, like falcons; their lariats swung, sang--sang higher--and
+Monarch, much perplexed, but scarcely angered yet, rose to his hind
+legs, then from his towering height looked down on horse and man. If,
+as they say, the vanquished prowess goes into the victor, then surely
+in that mighty chest, those arms like necks of bulls, was the power of
+the thousand cattle he had downed in fight.
+
+"Caramba! what a Bear! Pedro was not so far astray."
+
+"Sing--sing--sing!" the lariats flew. "Swish--pat!" one, two, three,
+they fell. These were not men to miss. Three ropes, three horses,
+leaping away to bear on the great beast's neck. But swifter than
+thought the supple paws went up. The ropes were slipped, and the
+spurred cow-ponies, ready for the shock, went, shockless,
+bounding--loose ropes trailing afar.
+
+"Hi--Hal! Ho--Lan! Head him!" as the Grizzly, liking not the unequal
+fight, made for the hills. But a deft Mexican in silver gear sent his
+hide riata whistling, then haunched his horse as the certain coil sank
+in the Grizzly's hock, and checked the Monarch with a heavy jar.
+Uttering one great snort of rage, he turned; his huge jaws crossed the
+rope, back nearly to his ears it went, and he ground it as a dog might
+grind a twig, so the straining pony bounded free.
+
+Round and round him now the riders swooped, waiting their chance. More
+than once his neck was caught, but he slipped the noose as though it
+were all play. Again he was caught by a foot and wrenched, almost
+thrown, by the weight of two strong steeds, and now he foamed in rage.
+Memories of olden days, or more likely the habit of olden days, came
+on him--days when he learned to strike the yelping pack that dodged
+his blows. He was far from the burnt thicket, but a single bush was
+near, and setting his broad back to that, he waited for the circling
+foe. Nearer and nearer they urged the frightened steeds, and Monarch
+watched--waited, as of old, for the dogs, till they were almost
+touching each other, then he sprang like an avalanche of rock. What
+can elude a Grizzly's dash? The earth shivered as he launched himself,
+and trembled when he struck. Three men, three horses, in each other's
+way. The dust was thick; they only knew he struck--struck--struck! The
+horses never rose.
+
+"Santa Maria!" came a cry of death, and hovering riders dashed to draw
+the Bear away. Three horses dead, one man dead, one nearly so, and
+only one escaped.
+
+"Crack! crack! crack!" went the pistols now as the Bear went rocking
+his huge form in rapid charge for the friendly hills; and the four
+riders, urged by Kellyan, followed fast. They passed him, wheeled,
+faced him. The pistols had wounded him in many places.
+
+"Don't shoot--don't shoot, but tire him out," the hunter urged.
+
+"Tire him out? Look at Carlos and Manuel back there. How many minutes
+will it be before the rest are down with them?" So the infuriating
+pistols popped till all their shots were gone, and Monarch foamed with
+slobbering jaws of rage.
+
+"Keep on! keep cool," cried Kellyan.
+
+His lariat flew as the cattle-killing paw was lifted for an instant.
+The lasso bound his wrist. "Sing! Sing!" went two, and caught him by
+the neck. A bull with his great club-foot in a noose is surely caught,
+but the Grizzly raised his supple, hand-like, tapering paw and gave
+one jerk that freed it. Now the two on his neck were tight; he could
+not slip them. The horses at the ends--they were dragging, choking
+him; men were shouting, hovering, watching for a new chance, when
+Monarch, firmly planting both paws, braced, bent those mighty
+shoulders, and, spite of shortening breath, leaned back on those two
+ropes as Samson did on pillars of the house of Baal, and straining
+horses with their riders were dragged forward more and more, long
+grooves being plowed behind; dragging them, he backed faster and
+faster still. His eyes were starting, his tongue lolling out.
+
+"Keep on! hold tight!" was the cry, till the ropers swung together,
+the better to resist; and Monarch, big and strong with frenzied hate,
+seeing now his turn, sprang forward like a shot. The horses leaped and
+escaped--almost; the last was one small inch too slow. The awful paw
+with jags of steel just grazed his flank. How slight it sounds! But
+what it really means is better not writ down.
+
+The riders had slipped their ropes in fear, and the Monarch, rumbling,
+snorting, bounding, trailed them to the hills, there to bite them off
+in peace, while the remnant of the gallant crew went, sadly muttering,
+back.
+
+Bitter words went round. Kellyan was cursed.
+
+"His fault. Why didn't we have the guns?"
+
+"We were all in it," was the answer, and more hard words, till Kellyan
+flushed, forgot his calm, and drew a pistol hitherto concealed, and
+the other "took it back."
+
+[Illustration: "RUMBLING AND SNORTING, HE MADE FOR THE FRIENDLY
+HILLS"]
+
+
+
+XV. THE FOAMING FLOOD
+
+
+"What is next, Lan?" said Lou, as they sat dispirited by the fire that
+night.
+
+Kellyan was silent for a time, then said slowly and earnestly, with a
+gleam in his eye: "Lou, that's the greatest Bear alive. When I seen
+him set up there like a butte and swat horses like they was flies, I
+jest loved him. He's the greatest thing God has turned loose in these
+yer hills. Before to-day, I sure wanted to get him; now, Lou, I'm
+a-going to get him, an' get him alive, if it takes all my natural
+days. I think I kin do it alone, but I know I kin do it with you," and
+deep in Kellyan's eyes there glowed a little spark of something not
+yet rightly named.
+
+They were camped in the hills, being no longer welcome at the ranch;
+the ranchers thought their price too high. Some even decided that the
+Monarch, being a terror to sheep, was not an undesirable neighbor. The
+cattle bounty was withdrawn, but the newspaper bounty was not.
+
+"I want you to bring in that Bear," was the brief but pregnant message
+from the rich newsman when he heard of the fight with the riders.
+
+"How are you going about it, Lan?"
+
+Every bridge has its rotten plank, every fence its flimsy rail, every
+great one his weakness, and Kellyan, as he pondered, knew how mad it
+was to meet this one of brawn with mere brute force.
+
+"Steel traps are no good; he smashes them. Lariats won't do, and he
+knows all about log traps. But I have a scheme. First, we must follow
+him up and learn his range. I reckon that'll take three months."
+
+So the two kept on. They took up that Bear-trail next day; they found
+the lariats chewed off. They followed day after day. They learned what
+they could from rancher and sheepherder, and much more was told them
+than they could believe.
+
+Three months, Lan said, but it took six months to carry out his plan;
+meanwhile Monarch killed and killed.
+
+In each section of his range they made one or two cage- or pen-traps
+of bolted logs. At the back end of each they put a small grating of
+heavy steel bars. The door was carefully made and fitted into grooves.
+It was of double plank, with tar-paper between to make it surely
+light-tight. It was sheeted with iron on the inside, and when it
+dropped it went into an iron-bound groove in the floor.
+
+They left these traps open and unset till they were grayed with age
+and smelt no more of man. Then the two hunters prepared for the final
+play. They baited all without setting them--baited them with honey,
+the lure that Monarch never had refused--and when at length they found
+the honey baits were gone, they came where he now was taking toll and
+laid the long-planned snare. Every trap was set, and baited as before
+with a mass of honey--but _honey now mixed with a potent sleeping
+draft_.
+
+
+
+XVI. LANDLOCKED
+
+
+That night the great Bear left his lair, one of his many lairs, and,
+cured of all his wounds, rejoicing in the fullness of his mighty
+strength, he strode toward the plains. His nose, ever alert,
+reported--sheep, a deer, a grouse; men--more sheep, some cows, and
+some calves; a bull--a fighting bull--and Monarch wheeled in big,
+rude, Bearish joy at the coming battle brunt; but as he hugely hulked
+from hill to hill a different message came, so soft and low, so
+different from the smell of beefish brutes, one might well wonder he
+could sense it, but like a tiny ringing bell when thunder booms it
+came, and Monarch wheeled at once. Oh, it cast a potent spell! It
+stood for something very near to ecstasy with him, and down the hill
+and through the pines he went, on and on faster yet, abandoned to its
+sorcery. Here to its home he traced it, a long, low cavern. He had
+seen such many times before, had been held in them more than once, but
+had learned to spurn them. For weeks he had been robbing them of their
+treasures, and its odor, like a calling voice, was still his guide.
+Into the cavern he passed and it reeked with the smell of joy. There
+was the luscious mass, and Monarch, with all caution lulled now,
+licked and licked, then seized to tear the bag for more, when down
+went the door with a low "bang!" The Monarch started, but all was
+still and there was no smell of danger. He had forced such doors
+before. His palate craved the honey still, and he licked and licked,
+greedily at first, then calmly, then slowly, then drowsily--then at
+last stopped. His eyes were closing, and he sank slowly down on the
+earth and slept a heavy sleep.
+
+Calm, but white-faced, were they--the men--when in the dawn they came.
+There were the huge scarred tracks in-leading; there was the door
+down; there dimly they could see a mass of fur that filled the pen,
+that heaved in deepest sleep.
+
+Strong ropes, strong chains and bands of steel were at hand, with
+chloroform, lest he should revive too soon. Through holes in the roof
+with infinite toil they chained him, bound him--his paws to his neck,
+his neck and breast and hind legs to a bolted beam. Then raising the
+door, they dragged him out, not with horses--none would go near--but
+with a windlass to a tree; and fearing the sleep of death, they let
+him now revive.
+
+Chained and double chained, frenzied, foaming, and impotent, what
+words can tell the state of the fallen Monarch? They put him on a
+sled, and six horses with a long chain drew it by stages to the plain,
+to the railway. They fed him enough to save his life. A great
+steam-derrick lifted Bear and beam and chain on to a flat-car, a
+tarpaulin was spread above his helpless form; the engine puffed,
+pulled out; and the Grizzly King was gone from his ancient hills.
+
+So they brought him to the great city, the Monarch born, in chains.
+They put him in a cage not merely strong enough for a lion, but thrice
+as strong, and once a rope gave way as the huge one strained his
+bonds. "He is loose," went the cry, and an army of onlookers and
+keepers fled; only the small man with the calm eye and the big man of
+the hills were stanch, so the Monarch was still held.
+
+Free in the cage, he swung round, looked this way and that, then
+heaved his powers against the triple angling steel and wrenched the
+cage so not a part of it was square. In time he clearly would break
+out. They dragged the prisoner to another that an elephant could not
+break down, but it stood on the ground, and in an hour the great beast
+had a cavern into the earth and was sinking out of sight, till a
+stream of water sent after him filled the hole and forced him again to
+view. They moved him to a new cage made for him since he came--a hard
+rock floor, great bars of nearly two-inch steel that reached up nine
+feet and then projected in for five. The Monarch wheeled once around,
+then, rearing, raised his ponderous bulk, wrenched those bars,
+unbreakable, and bent and turned them in their sockets with one heave
+till the five-foot spears were pointed out, and then sprang to climb.
+Nothing but pikes and blazing brands in a dozen ruthless hands could
+hold him back. The keepers watched him night and day till a stronger
+cage was made, impregnable with steel above and rocks below.
+
+The Untamed One passed swiftly around, tried every bar, examined every
+corner, sought for a crack in the rocky floor, and found at last the
+place where was a six-inch timber beam--the only piece of wood in its
+frame. It was sheathed in iron, but exposed for an inch its whole
+length. One claw could reach the wood, and here he lay on his side and
+raked--raked all day till a great pile of shavings was lying by it and
+the beam sawn in two; but the cross-bolts remained, and when Monarch
+put his vast shoulder to the place it yielded not a whit. That was his
+last hope; now it was gone; and the huge Bear sank down in the cage
+with his nose in his paws and sobbed--long, heavy sobs, animal sounds
+indeed, but telling just as truly as in man of the broken spirit--the
+hope and the life gone out. The keepers came with food at the
+appointed time, but the Bear moved not. They set it down, but in the
+morning it was still untouched. The Bear was lying as before, his
+ponderous form in the pose he had first taken. The sobbing was
+replaced by a low moan at intervals.
+
+Two days went by. The food, untouched, was corrupting in the sun. The
+third day, and Monarch still lay on his breast, his huge muzzle under
+his huger paw. His eyes were hidden; only a slight heaving of his
+broad chest was now seen.
+
+"He is dying," said one keeper. "He can't live overnight."
+
+"Send for Kellyan," said another.
+
+So Kellyan came, slight and thin. There was the beast that he had
+chained, pining, dying. He had sobbed his life out in his last hope's
+death, and a thrill of pity came over the hunter, for men of grit and
+power love grit and power. He put his arm through the cage bars and
+stroked him, but Monarch made no sign. His body was cold. At length a
+little moan was sign of life, and Kellyan said, "Here, let me go in
+to him."
+
+"You are mad," said the keepers, and they would not open the cage. But
+Kellyan persisted till they put in a cross-grating in front of the
+Bear. Then, with this between, he approached. His hand was on the
+shaggy head, but Monarch lay as before. The hunter stroked his victim
+and spoke to him. His hand went to the big round ears, small above the
+head. They were rough to his touch. He looked again, then started.
+What! is it true? Yes, the stranger's tale was true, for both ears
+were pierced with a round hole--one torn large--and Kellyan knew that
+once again he had met his little Jack.
+
+"Why, Jacky, I didn't know it was you. I never would have done it if I
+had known it was you. Jacky, old pard, don't you know me?"
+
+But Jack stirred not, and Kellyan got up quickly. Back to the hotel he
+flew; there he put on his hunter's suit, smoky and smelling of pine
+gum and grease, and returned with a mass of honeycomb to reenter the
+cage.
+
+"Jacky, Jacky!" he cried, "honey, honey!" and he held the tempting
+comb before him. But Monarch lay as one dead now.
+
+"Jacky, Jacky! don't you know me?" He dropped the honey and laid his
+hands on the great muzzle.
+
+The voice was forgotten. The old-time invitation, "Honey,
+Jacky--honey," had lost its power, but the _smell_ of the honey,
+the coat, the hands that he had fondled, had together a hidden
+potency.
+
+There is a time when the dying of our race forget their life, but
+clearly remember the scenes of childhood; these only are real and
+return with master power. And why not with a Bear? The power of scent
+was there to call them back again, and Jacky, the Grizzly Monarch,
+raised his head a little--just a little; the eyes were nearly closed,
+but the big brown nose was jerked up feebly two or three times--the
+sign of interest that Jacky used to give in days of old. Now it was
+Kellyan that broke down even as the Bear had done.
+
+"I didn't know it was you, Jacky, or I never would have done it. Oh,
+Jacky, forgive me!" He rose and fled from the cage.
+
+The keepers were there. They scarcely understood the scene, but one of
+them, acting on the hint, pushed the honeycomb nearer and cried,
+"Honey, Jacky--honey!"
+
+Filled by despair, he had lain down to die, but here was a new-born
+hope, not clear, not exact as words might put it, but his conqueror
+had shown himself a friend; this seemed a new hope, and the keeper,
+taking up the old call, "Honey, Jacky--honey!" pushed the comb till it
+touched his muzzle. The smell was wafted to his sense, its message
+reached his brain; hope honored, it must awake response. The great
+tongue licked the comb, appetite revived, and thus in newborn Hope
+began the chapter of his gloom.
+
+Skilful keepers were there with plans to meet the Monarch's every
+want. Delicate foods were offered and every shift was tried to tempt
+him back to strength and prison life.
+
+He ate and--lived.
+
+And still he lives, but pacing--pacing--pacing--you may see him,
+scanning not the crowds, but something beyond the crowds, breaking
+down at times into petulant rages, but recovering anon his ponderous
+dignity, looking--waiting--watching--held ever by that Hope, that
+unknown Hope, that came. Kellyan has been to him since, but Monarch
+knows him not. Over his head, beyond him, was the great Bear's gaze,
+far away toward Tallac or far away on the sea, we knowing not which or
+why, but pacing--pacing--pacing--held like the storied Wandering One
+to a life of ceaseless journey--a journey aimless, endless, and sad.
+
+The wound-spots long ago have left his shaggy coat, but the earmarks
+still are there, the ponderous strength, the elephantine dignity. His
+eyes are dull,--never were bright,--but they seem not vacant, and most
+often fixed on the Golden Gate where the river seeks the sea.
+
+The river, born in high Sierra's flank, that lived and rolled and
+grew, through mountain pines, o'erleaping man-made barriers, then to
+reach with growing power the plains and bring its mighty flood at last
+to the Bay of Bays, a prisoner there to lie, the prisoner of the
+Golden Gate, seeking forever Freedom's Blue, seeking and
+raging--raging and seeking--back and forth, forever--in vain.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11135 ***